The new trains tell you which side the doors open on which removes that mild smugness you can get by knowing in advance and waltzing straight off whilst tourists and thickos stand on the opposite side to be greeted by a wall.

It also goes the furthest south of any line, though several lines go further north.

It's in two parts because it's a merger of several different lines. There also used to be a spur heading out from Old Street, but that was turned over to National Rail a few years ago.

Mill Hill East was the first part of a planned extension that would have gone across to meet at Edgware (the Northern Heights Plan), but WWII came along and it was cancelled.

They're going to split the line at Kennington so the Tottenham Court Road branch heads west, either via Vauxhall or a new station nearby, to Battersea Power Station (and the new US embassy), and then on to terminate at Clapham Junction (possibly). It won't increase capacity hugely, though, and it doesn't address the key problem of the residents of Camberwell suffering economically from not having easy access to the tube network.

Camden Town will be split in two eventually, too, but that's something that's been planned but not funded for years. I think Osborne recently cut the funding he originally wanted to allocate to it, I'm not sure, I'd have to look it up. Tentatively could happen around 2017 or so, but that will undoubtedly get pushed back another five years (yet again).

Unfortunately, TFL are basically only able to afford tube extensions now if private investors take on most of the costs - hence this madness, designed purely to serve the new luxury flats planned for the Battersea redevelopment:

The whole Nine Elms redevelopment will be huge, and will create a new, and large, local population, currently not served by accessible public transport (the two Battersea stations and Vauxhall are a fair trek away).

But then as the longest of the lines down there I can imagine it becoming more difficult to keep it running like a tube line and not more infrequently like a mainline train line (like the Met line, basically).

My understanding is that there's plenty of spare capacity on the lines between Clapham Junction and Vauxhall, so a new tunnel isn't even necessary if you don't mind a station being a bit further from the power station/embassy. They could even build a spur for the Nine Elms station if needed. The thing that gets me is that private developers are so bloody-minded to develop that area that public transport planning seems to be almost coming up with plans more complicated than necessary, which will cost more, almost to justify all the extra money they could use.

Though I appreciate that the Victoria line's ability to cope with interchanging passengers is an issue.

It’s been identified at local, regional and national levels of government as one of the very few areas within Zone 3 that can be used to accommodate the residential development necessary in London.

I agree that it seems that new (and generally upmarket) housing developments seem to be being prioritised over existing deprived areas, but at the moment, the latter isn’t an option at all. Splitting off the Northern Line at Kennington means that the bank and Charing Cross branches’ capacity will increase (they will be able to run trains more frequently if they operate the Charing Cross side as a shuttle service, rather than having it feeding into the other branch before heading out to the suburbs.

And my understanding was that there isn’t really the spare capacity mainline capacity between Vauxhall and Clapham Junction, even since the closure of the Eurostar platforms.

Reading around transport blogs, there seems to be some politics at play here. The anti-Boris factions say that there is extra capacity, but it's being hushed up so that Boris's developer friends can get their way, whereas the pro-Boris lot are saying that there isn't extra capacity, and even if there was it would be so complicated to build the tunnel/mainline interchange required that they might as well just build a tunnel the whole way.

The increase in capacity won't be much though, will it? Camden Town's the main issue still, as it's always been, or so I've read, though I didn't know they might stop the merging of lines as it is now...

I have a civil service mate who used to work in the Department of Transport, and apparently they're gagging for it, but there's no way they're going to be able to even start planning and funding it for a while yet.

because it's short, fast, goes from my nearest Tube stop, is hardly ever closed for engineering works, and it has some nice new fancy trains. Also it's quick to go to Brixton, and that's the only place I ever go in South London.

Mostly Docklands proved more popular that anticipated and the DLR alone couldn't handle the number of people travelling there. The extension had been floundering for years the Docklands rejuvanation provided the imputus to actually do it.

Plus you know if you have a big commercial area, it's probably you know a good idea to have it connected on the tube?

(what with Canary Wharf being the busiest station that isn't also a mainline terminus thses days, and the Olympics in Stratford), but the Docklands developments only really took off after the Jubilee line went through it. The DLR was operating at less than capacity from its construction up until a good few years after the Jubilee line extension.

but the fact that the carriages are much bigger than most other lines and the fact thats its mostly above ground make it the nicest to actually be on. for the same reason the overground is good like that.

It may be bigger but someone will always pee on there and as I live at the end of the line, it gets quite scary late at night after Barking where most people get off apart from one person with a funny eye.

I have to count two dark stations past Finsbury Park, then get off. Unfortunately they swapped the platform at the last minute at Moorgate so I was on a different train than I imagined. This happens to people ALL THE TIME.

I really like that you can walk all the way to the end of the train when you get on/about to get off. And its really clean. And it smells nice. And its always air conditioned in the summer. And it goes to some good places.

The overground I get from Fenchuch street is always full of phelgming povvos.

However, last time I got on this I ended up sitting two seats down from a big fat sweaty looking chap. There was a horrible stench which I assumed was coming from him perma-farting out the previous night's tikka masala and I was kinda covering my nose and muttering "smelly cunt" under my breath. I was massively hungover and just wasn't in the mood.

Wasn't until I changed trains and the smell came back that I realised I had trodden in a massive dog turd. Doh!

east on the central line, cos when i did that when i was 13 or so, the walkway was lined with tiles and the walkways and stairs were not purely vertical or horizontal and the small tiling sent my brain off into having a sort of hallucinatory vertigineous spasm

So there are two Circle line platforms at Paddington now, and it's a pain in the arse because one platform's at the start of the line and the other is at the end and whichever tube or mainline train you're changing from will always be closest to the one you *don't* want to get, and you end up on an eastbound Circle line train which stops a stop later.

particularly central, northern and picardilly, because they seemed like the dirtiest and most dangerous, they have been cleaned up a lot now, angel station used to seem to be a very dangerous station as it was an island station with no barriers, so the more people crowded on the more dangerous

The original UK cinema and video versions were cut by the BBFC to heavily edit the broom impalement, a shot of a spade in a man's head, the cannibal biting off a rat's head, and his pursuit and attempted rape of Sharon Gurney. The full uncut version was finally passed by the BBFC for the DVD release in March 2006.

Sounds immense.

So the evil is somewhere between Russell Square and Holborn? Mummies from the British Museum? The Masons as their hall?

As it took you from one place you didn't want to be (Whitechapel) to another place you didn't want to be (New Cross/New Cross gate). Also, the only tube line that doesn't cross into Zone 1 at any point.

There's a few lines around S. London on there, but these end before reaching a terminal. Around the rest there are a few junctions that have been drawn, but not much else, the lines into Euston (that the Overground uses) aren't on there either, for example.